Brazil on the Move by John Dos Passos Read Free Book Online Page A

world leadership like the Europe our fathers remembered.”
    “Without imperialism? How can you do it?”
    There was a polite shrugging of shoulders.
    “America seems so much weaker in victory,” sighed Dr. Penido. “But,” he banged his fist on the table and went on briskly, “the important thing is that we have produced a successful experiment in international cooperation … Sespe would not exist without the cooperation of both Americans and Brazilians. We have proved that it works. We have learned a method. Now we could go on to do great things, ifjust at this crucial moment in the United States you did not seem to lose interest.”
    “We feel,” one of the others echoed, “a certain lack of comprehension.”
    Dr. Penido yawned and rose to his feet. It was late. We groped our way through unlit streets and freightyards stacked with corded wood back to our sleeping car.
The Rockcrusher That Never Gets Out of Order
    In the morning a small plane came down from the mine at Itabira to pick me up. Now I was going to see where all those orecars came from. As the pilot spiraled up from the airstrip at Valadares to vault the first range of razorbacked mountains I began to note the extent of the devastation of the country. As far as I could see into the murk fires made a red marbling on the cutover slopes. The mountains under us smoldered like burnt papers in a grate.
    Pastures along the winding streams showed that fine network of cattlepaths that comes from overgrazing. Houses, usually solitary on a hillock in a valley, were scarce. Near a house you could usually make out the broad bunched leaves of a few banana trees and some tiny green squares of cultivated land. It was hard to imagine how such a sparse population could so ravage the hills. The railroad’s demands for firewood, the burning of charcoal to cook with, and its use in iron furnaces, had already gutted the forests for an enormous tract of country. The logging out of lumber for export did the rest. As we climbed again to clear a new set of granite escarpments the valleys below were drowned in smoke. The plane tore into speeding clouds that packed tight like cotton wool against the windows.
    There was no ceiling at all over the airfield at the mine, so we had to turn back. When we landed at Valadares again the Brazilian business man who shared the seat with me shoutedin my ear. “I was anxious,” he said, “until the pilot told me he was the father of eight. The father of eight just has to be careful.”
    As we walked with throbbing ears across the field to the shelter, he added that he wondered whether as a foreigner I understood the significance of what I was seeing in the Vale do Rio Doce: “It is climbing a series of steps. First the valley was so unhealthy we could hardly keep up the railroad. The malaria service and public health make sanitary the valley so that we can improve the railroad … America helps Brazil up a step. In the State of Minas Gerais we have the richest iron deposit in the world but to get it out we had only picks and shovels. The American loan buys the machinery to work it … Another step …”
    “But what about the campaign against American imperialism?”
    “That,” he said, “is the labor of Communists.”
    He put his arm around my shoulder and offered to buy my lunch. After lunch, which, since the public health doctors were still in Valadares, turned out to be a second farewell celebration, the father of eight did manage to land us on the wet hilltop airstrip at Itabira. The mountains all around were still draped in clouds. The drenched air made us shiver after the heat of the valley.
    The quiet man in khaki who came out to meet us introduced himself as Gil Whitehead, American manager of the mine for the Rio Doce Company. “It’s too bad that you can’t see the peak of Caué,” he said and looked up at the murky ceiling just overhead. “I’d like you to see the magic mountain.”
    While we waited for the